Porsche on Friday said that it was pumping in 1 billion euros (US$1.09 billion) to bring its first all-electric car to the market by “the end of the decade,” as the German luxury sports car giant joined the race for a slice of the green car market.
The car dubbed “Mission E” is to boast an acceleration of 0 to 100km per hour in under 3.5 seconds and an autonomy of more than 500km on a single charge.
A specially developed charger can replenish the car’s lithium-ion batteries with sufficient power for 80 percent of the range after just 15 minutes, the company said.
“With Mission E, we are making a clear statement about the future of the brand. Even in a greatly changing motoring world, Porsche is to maintain its front-row position with this fascinating sports car,” supervisory board chairman Wolfgang Porsche said in a statement.
About 700 million euros of the investment would be spent on a new paint shop and an assembly plant in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, where 1,000 news jobs would also be created.
Another 300 million euros are development costs, the group said. Germany’s mighty auto industry is racing to catch up with US green car star Tesla Motors Inc.
Besides Porsche, Audi is also building an electric urban 4x4 that could go into production in 2018 under the name Q6.
Despite a massive pollution cheating scandal engulfing Volkswagen AG, the parent company of both Porsche and Audi, the group has said it would not compromise on investments for its future.
INVESTOR RESILIENCE? An analyst said that despite near-term pressures, foreign investors tend to view NT dollar strength as a positive signal for valuation multiples Morgan Stanley has flagged a potential 10 percent revenue decline for Taiwan’s tech hardware sector this year, as a sharp appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar begins to dent the earnings power of major exporters. In what appears to be the first such warning from a major foreign brokerage, the US investment bank said the currency’s strength — fueled by foreign capital inflows and expectations of US interest rate cuts — is compressing profit margins for manufacturers with heavy exposure to US dollar-denominated revenues. The local currency has surged about 10 percent against the greenback over the past quarter and yesterday breached
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